Intellectual property can be considered in terms of either its “embodiments” or its “representations.” Generally, an embodiment of an intellectual property is the property itself, while a representation of the intellectual property can be data or meta-data either describing or pointing to the property.
For example, intellectual properties such as real-time human communications, stored and forwarded messages, documents or collections, dynamic or persistent data structures and databases, interpretable scripts, source code, and partially or fully compiled programs and applications, as well as other intellectual properties generally referred to as “content,” are often described as an embodiment of the intellectual property. Embodiments of intellectual property can also be theoretical or abstract concepts which are exemplified, documented or reified as a specific form of content.
Legal rights, contracts, agreements or other assertions can be embodied in the form of content, but are not the embodiment of the intellectual property itself. Instead, these are considered representations of the intellectual property. Some Intellectual properties, such as a deed or title to a home, can be representations of physical or real properties.
Intellectual properties are becoming more and more central to the world economy. In an information economy, discrete or aggregate values are placed on intellectual properties, and the markets for general or specific applications of these properties are huge. For example, the software industry, which has embodiments of intellectual properties in software products and services, and representations of property rights in licenses, legal contracts and agreements, copyrights, trademarks and patents, currently has annual sales rates of over $135 billion per year.
Increasingly, the Internet (or World Wide Web) is the medium of transmission of intellectual properties such as software products and the like. The Internet uses the Internet Protocol to frame, route, and reassemble digital messages. The transaction of intellectual property is a general transfer of data and data communications over the Internet; intellectual property such as software is simply treated as a bit stream in Internet Protocol. On top of the Internet Protocol are specialized transport layer services, such as HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) or SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Within these, many messages are encoded in markup languages such as XML (Extensible Markup Language), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) meta-markup language based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language).
With regard to the protection of intellectual property, the prior art takes a defensive posture that is focused on guarding the intellectual property against unauthorized access, duplication and use. Limitations are placed on the use and distribution of a piece of intellectual property, and various means are used to attempt to enforce these limitations. Oftentimes, the limitations can be easily circumvented, and so enforcement can be difficult and therefore is mostly ineffective.
In addition, while in some cases the prior art may take advantage of the Internet for delivery of intellectual property such as software, the prior art is still encumbered by more traditional mechanisms for conducting the legal and commercial aspects of intellectual property transactions. For example, purchase orders, terms and conditions, license agreements and the like must be negotiated, written, reviewed and approved. These more traditional mechanisms can cause delay in the delivery and use of the intellectual property by a purchaser or licensee, and delay in the receipt of payments or royalties due to a seller or licensor.
What is needed is a method and system thereof for controlling the identification, negotiation, establishment, and transaction of intellectual properties (embodiments and representations) over the Internet (e.g., an “IP over IP framework”). What is also needed is a method and/or system that can satisfy the above need and can model and assert information regarding the rights, responsibilities and other terms of use of intellectual property within the IP over IP framework. What is further needed is a method and/or system that can satisfy the above needs, and can allow interrogation of that information and can respond to those interrogations. In addition, what is needed is a method and/or system that can satisfy the above needs and can allow for storage and transport of the information regarding the rights, responsibilities and other terms of use of intellectual property. The present invention provides a novel solution to the above needs.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after having read the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments which are illustrated in the various drawing figures.